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Box Office Bomb · Aaron Mahnke's Cabinet of Curiosities

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  Speaker 1: Hey, folks, erin here. I have some exciting news to
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  Speaker 1: share with you, so please don't skip this message. We'll
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  Speaker 1: get to our new stories in just a moment. Don't worry.
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  Speaker 1: This podcast has been delivering stories to you for roughly
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  Speaker 1: five years now, with today's episode featuring stories numbered eleven
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  Speaker 1: sixty nine and eleven seventy. It's wild to think that
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  Speaker 1: we've crafted so many little journeys for you to enjoy.
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  Speaker 1: But I also know that that means that finding older
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  Speaker 1: ones can often be a challenge. Well, I might have
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  Speaker 1: a solution for you. On November twelfth, we're publishing our
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  Speaker 1: very first cabinet of Curiosity's Book with our partners over
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  Speaker 1: at Saint Martin's Press. As of today, the cover has
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  Speaker 1: been revealed and the pre order page has gone live,
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  Speaker 1: So you know what I'm going to ask for next, right,
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  Speaker 1: Every single pre order that we get will go into
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  Speaker 1: a bucket that counts toward the book's release week sales,
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  Speaker 1: which means that you find, folks, have a great shot
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  Speaker 1: at making this a New York Times bestseller, and knowing
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  Speaker 1: how amazing all of you are, I feel pretty good
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  Speaker 1: about those odds. This book will be a collection of
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  Speaker 1: hundreds of Cabinet stories that you know and love, plus
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  Speaker 1: a handful of new ones. And best of all, they'll
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  Speaker 1: be sorted topically, making it really easy for you to
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  Speaker 1: pick your favorite category to read or to look up
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  Speaker 1: a tale you remember but haven't been able to find before.
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  Speaker 1: And the book is gorgeous too, making it a great
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  Speaker 1: addition to any bookcase or bedside table. I've put the
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  Speaker 1: link to the official Cabinet of Curiosities book pre order
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  Speaker 1: page in the episode description, so just tap on that
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  Speaker 1: and let it take you to your favorite bookstore where
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  Speaker 1: you can pre order your very own copy, and now
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  Speaker 1: on with the show. You know, film has changed a
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  Speaker 1: lot over the last one hundred and thirty years. We
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  Speaker 1: went from short clips of only a few seconds long
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  Speaker 1: to three hour motion pictures. Silent films gave way to
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  Speaker 1: the talkies, and given the amount of computer generated effects
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  Speaker 1: in today's movies, it might be safe for referring to
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  Speaker 1: many of them as animated films instead of a life
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  Speaker 1: live action pictures. But when film was still in its infancy,
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  Speaker 1: as directors were learning how to fool the audience with
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  Speaker 1: tricks of the lens, actors were also on the hunt
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  Speaker 1: for new ways to keep everyone on the edge of
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  Speaker 1: their seats. Now, stunt doubles have been used since nineteen
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  Speaker 1: oh three's The Great Train Robbery, but some actors preferred
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  Speaker 1: to do their own stunts, and sure we still see
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  Speaker 1: that today. Just look at any film where Tom Cruise
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  Speaker 1: is running or hanging from an airplane, a mountain, or
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  Speaker 1: a building. But back in nineteen nineteen, one silent action
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  Speaker 1: star stood above the rest. Harold Lloyd born in Birchard, Nebraska,
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen ninety three. Harold walked a rocky path on
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  Speaker 1: the way to start them. After performing with Thomas Edison's
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  Speaker 1: Motion Picture Company early in his career, he had a
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  Speaker 1: west to try his luck with the burgeoning movie industry
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  Speaker 1: out there. After a series of rejections at a studio
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  Speaker 1: head who wouldn't give him a shot, he met his
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  Speaker 1: future collaborator, Hal Roach. Now Roach was in charge of
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  Speaker 1: his own studio, and together the pair made a series
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  Speaker 1: of silent shorts that drew in big crowds. Lloyd's lonesome
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  Speaker 1: Luke and Glass characters were often involved in chaotic, mad
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  Speaker 1: cap situations with a lot of slaps to humor and
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  Speaker 1: some pretty dangerous stunts. For example, in the nineteen fifteen
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  Speaker 1: short called Lonesome Luke Messenger, Lloyd and a fellow bike
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  Speaker 1: messenger get into a number of shenanigans. One scene has
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  Speaker 1: their bicycle knocking someone off a ladder before careening into
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  Speaker 1: a tree. These are the kind of stunts that he
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  Speaker 1: became known for, and they helped rocket him to the
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  Speaker 1: top of the box office, and so it was no
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  Speaker 1: surprise that Lloyd would find himself being courted by the media.
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  Speaker 1: He often appeared in magazines and on posters advertising his films,
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  Speaker 1: and in August of nineteen nineteen, several months after signing
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  Speaker 1: a new contract with the Pathe Distribution Company, he was
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  Speaker 1: invited to WHITSL Photography Studio in Los Angeles for a
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  Speaker 1: photo shoot. But it wasn't just him. He also had
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  Speaker 1: his fellow co stars and a box of props at
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  Speaker 1: his side to help sell his adventurous escapades. Among the
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  Speaker 1: various odds inside that box were some paper mache bombs,
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  Speaker 1: completely harmless and not filled with explosives at all. And
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  Speaker 1: that's when one of Harold's gagmen, a guy named Frank Terry,
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  Speaker 1: lit one of the fake bombs and handed it to
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  Speaker 1: the actor. Harold had been holding a cigarette which he
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  Speaker 1: had tried to light using the wick from the prop.
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  Speaker 1: Plumes of smoke began to pour out from the top
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  Speaker 1: of the bomb, and he knew that so much smoke
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  Speaker 1: would ruin the shoot, so he went to place the
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  Speaker 1: object on a nearby table, and that's when the worst
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  Speaker 1: thing happened. It blew up in his face. Apparently, Pathay
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  Speaker 1: had been planning on a scene in an upcoming film
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  Speaker 1: not starring Lloyd, and it involved the use of some
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  Speaker 1: very real bombs. One of these explosive devices found its
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  Speaker 1: way into the prop box at the studio, and of
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  Speaker 1: all the ones that Terry could have handed him, he
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  Speaker 1: picked the only real one to do so. The explosion
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  Speaker 1: nearly blew the roof off, leaving a gaping hole sixteen
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  Speaker 1: feet above their heads. It also fractured Terry's upper dental
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  Speaker 1: plate into two pieces while rendering the foot potographer unconscious,
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  Speaker 1: but Harold Lloyd was still standing despite being closest to
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  Speaker 1: the blast. Sure he suffered burns across his chest and
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  Speaker 1: face and nearly lost his eye. Thankfully, he wound up
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  Speaker 1: saving his sight. Unfortunately, he did lose one thing, well
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  Speaker 1: two really, his thumb and forefinger on his right hand.
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  Speaker 1: Once he had healed and got back to work, though
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  Speaker 1: hal Roach and producer Sam Goldwyn invented a prosthetic device
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  Speaker 1: for him to wear. Goldwyn had been a glove salesman
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  Speaker 1: before founding his own studio, so he put that knowledge
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  Speaker 1: to work and took a rubber mold of Lloyd's complete
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  Speaker 1: left hand, and then, according to silent film historian Annette
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  Speaker 1: the Gastino, Lloyd no relation by the way, the mold
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  Speaker 1: was reversed to simulate the incomplete right hand. The missing
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  Speaker 1: fingers were then removed from the mold and inserted into
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  Speaker 1: a leather glove, which slipped over Lloyd's right hand, giving
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  Speaker 1: him the appearance of having all five fingers intact. He
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  Speaker 1: only ever wore it while on the camera. When walking
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  Speaker 1: about town, he simply kept his hand jammed inside his pocket,
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  Speaker 1: and if he had to greet anyone, he shook their
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  Speaker 1: hand with his left. Harold Lloyd was one of the
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  Speaker 1: most talented stars of the silent era. He pulled off
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  Speaker 1: some of the wildest stunts ever captured on film, including
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  Speaker 1: hanging from a giant clock, and he did it all
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  Speaker 1: after surviving a bomb blast and losing two of his fingers,
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  Speaker 1: and for that we should give that man a hand.
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  Speaker 1: We've probably all had a situation at work where we're
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  Speaker 1: asked to do something we don't want to. Maybe someone
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  Speaker 1: left and now we have to take on their responsibilities
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  Speaker 1: as well, or a manager is trying to avoid hiring
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  Speaker 1: a new person, so they're just adding those old duties
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  Speaker 1: onto our own list. But even though we would love
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  Speaker 1: to say not my job and then walk away, we
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  Speaker 1: don't always get that satisfaction. The truth is if we
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  Speaker 1: want to stay employed, then sometimes we have to perform
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  Speaker 1: tasks that we were never meant to do. British marine
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  Speaker 1: biologist Jeffrey Tandy ran into something similar in nineteen forty one,
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  Speaker 1: except if he'd said not my job, then World War
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  Speaker 1: two might have gone a lot differently. Tandy was born
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen hundred and graduated from Oxford in nineteen twenty one.
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  Speaker 1: He then attended Burbeck College in London for a graduate
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  Speaker 1: school with a focus on marine biology. After his studies
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  Speaker 1: were over, he took a job at the Natural History
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  Speaker 1: Museum in London, where he worked for over twenty years
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  Speaker 1: studying cryptogams. Notice how I said cryptogams, which is a
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  Speaker 1: word used to describe plant like organisms that do not
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  Speaker 1: produce spores or flowers, not to be confused with cryptograms
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  Speaker 1: or puzzles involving encoded text. Basically, Tandy's line of work
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  Speaker 1: was algae, moss and fung guy, not word games. But
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  Speaker 1: during the war he found himself in the very strange
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  Speaker 1: position of an impromptu career change. He had joined the
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  Speaker 1: Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve and was sent to Bletchley Park,
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  Speaker 1: which happened to be a massive mansion. It was built
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  Speaker 1: during the nineteenth century, but after Admiral Sir Hugh Sinclair,
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  Speaker 1: the head of the Secret Intelligence Service, bought the estates
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight, it became home base for Allied codebreakers,
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  Speaker 1: and it was there that Tandy ran into a bit
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  Speaker 1: of a hiccup. You see, the Ministry of Defense was
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  Speaker 1: in need of someone with well to borrow a phrase
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  Speaker 1: from mister Liam Neeson a particular set of skills cryptography skills,
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  Speaker 1: to be exact. But Tandy wasn't a cryptogrammist. He was
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  Speaker 1: a cryptogamist, the foremost experts and algae in the reserve
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  Speaker 1: in fact. But those two similar words got confused and
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  Speaker 1: the Ministry of Defense came knocking, and Tandy was in
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  Speaker 1: no position to say no. So for two years he
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  Speaker 1: served in a secret code breaking group, biding his time
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  Speaker 1: as a member of one of the most important and
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  Speaker 1: covert units of the war. And then in nineteen forty
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  Speaker 1: one he got his big break. Some German U boats
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  Speaker 1: had been destroyed by Allied torpedoes, leaving behind a number
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  Speaker 1: of documents that had been salvaged from the recks. But
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  Speaker 1: this wasn't just any paperwork. Among the materials rescued from
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  Speaker 1: the bottom of the ocean were instructions on how to
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  Speaker 1: decipher enemy messages written using Germany's Enigma machine. In other words,
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  Speaker 1: the key to understanding what the Germans were saying to
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  Speaker 1: each other in secret. Unfortunately, those papers were unusable in
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  Speaker 1: their current state. They were soggy and hardly readable. They
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  Speaker 1: needed to be dried out and repaired before they could
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  Speaker 1: be used. Enter Jeffrey Tandy. His previous experience in handling
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  Speaker 1: water logged objects and organisms such as algae were finally
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  Speaker 1: being put to good use. He grabbed some supplies from
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  Speaker 1: the museum and he got to work. His skill set
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  Speaker 1: had come in quite handy as he dried out the
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  Speaker 1: documents Once they were in good enough condition to be
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  Speaker 1: read by his colleagues, they were passed along to the
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  Speaker 1: code breakers for further deciphering. The Allies now had a
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  Speaker 1: way to unlock intercepted German communicays, and of course it
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  Speaker 1: proved invaluable to the war effort. Thanks to Tandy's expertise,
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  Speaker 1: he shortened the length of World War II by his
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  Speaker 1: many as two to four years, and saved countless lives
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  Speaker 1: as well. Jeffrey Tandy didn't throw his hands up until
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  Speaker 1: the Ministry of Defense that it wasn't his job. He
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  Speaker 1: did what many of us do when thrust into occupations
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  Speaker 1: were unqualified for. He faked it until he made it.
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  Speaker 1: I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet
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  Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com.
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  Speaker 1: The show was created by me Aaron Mankey in partnership
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  Speaker 1: with how Stuff Works. I make another award winning show
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  Speaker 1: called Lore, which is a podcast, book series, and television show,
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  Speaker 1: and you can learn all about it over at the
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  Speaker 1: Worldolore dot com. And until next time, stay curious.